By BeauHD from Slashdot's wolf-of-wall-street department:An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Goldman Sachs is setting up a trading desk to make markets in digital currencies such as bitcoin, according to people with knowledge of the strategy. The bank aims to get the business running by the end of June, if not earlier, two of the people said. Another said it's still trying to work out security issues as well as how it would hold, or custody, the assets. The move positions Goldman Sachs to become the first large Wall Street firm to make markets in cryptocurrencies, whose wild price swings and surging values have captured the public's imagination but given pause to established institutions. Goldman Sachs is now assembling a team in New York, one of the people said. While the bank hasn't made a decision where to house the desk, one possibility is that it will operate within the fixed-income, currencies and commodities unit's systematic trading function, which conducts transactions electronically, two people said.

By BeauHD from Slashdot's subtly-named department:"Amazon applied for an 'AmazonTube' trademark earlier this week, according to a filing found by TV Answer Man, as the company's public feud with Google over accessing YouTube content on Amazon's devices continues to escalate," reports The Verge. "While there's not a lot of information about what AmazonTube might be, based on the trademark application's description of 'providing non-downloadable pre-recorded audio, visual and audiovisual works via wireless networks on a variety of topics of general interest,' it sure sounds like a YouTube competitor." From the report: TechCrunch notes that Amazon has also applied for a trademark on "OpenTube," as well, which, if anything, is a more blatant name for what Google is looking to accomplish here. It's also not the first time that Amazon has been rumored to be working on its own, free video service -- earlier this year there were rumors that Amazon was planning a "freemium" version of Prime Video, although the company released a statement saying that it had no plans to do so.

By msmash from Slashdot's aftermath department:Jason Koebler, writing for Motherboard: The news that Apple throttles iPhones that have old batteries will reinvigorate the right to repair debate as the movement enters a crucial year. Third party repair shops say they've already seen an uptick in customers asking for battery replacements to speed up their slow phones, and right to repair activists who are pushing for state legislation that will make third party and self repair more accessible say Apple's secrecy about this behavior will give them a powerful rallying message. "If Apple were serious about battery life, they'd market battery replacements," Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of Repair.org, told me in an email. "Apple clearly has a big financial benefit when people decide their phones are too slow and head to the Apple Store for a new phone." Repair.org is a right to repair advocacy group that is made up largely of small, third party repair shops, which is spearheading the effort to get states to consider legislation that will make it easier to repair electronic devices.

By BeauHD from Slashdot's moving-on-to-bigger-and-better-things department:Eric Schmidt will be stepping down as the executive chairman of Alphabet's board of directors and transitioning to a technical adviser, the company announced. He will continue to serve on the company's board. CNBC reports: Schmidt first joined Google as CEO in 2001, back when the company only had several hundred employees, and become its executive chairman 10 years later. He maintained that role when Google restructured to become Alphabet in 2015. "Larry, Sergey, Sundar and I all believe that the time is right in Alphabet's evolution for this transition," Schmidt said in a statement. "The Alphabet structure is working well, and Google and the Other Bets are thriving. In recent years, I've been spending a lot of my time on science and technology issues, and philanthropy, and I plan to expand that work."

By BeauHD from Slashdot's cause-and-effect department:With more kids than ever using streaming services like Netflix for their entertainment, Exstreamist wanted to see what this means for the advertising industry. They were able to determine that kids in "Netflix Only" homes are saved from just over 230 hours of commercials a year when compared to traditional television viewership homes. From the report: We pulled numbers from the National Institute of Health, and found that children are watching 2.68 hours of television a day (in some cases, up to nine hours). In homes with more technology devices like tablets and kid-accessible computers, screen time jumps by approximately one hour per day. Currently, the average hour of television contains 14.25 minutes of commercials, or about 24% of airtime. Networks are even speeding up shows to cram more commercials into each episode. With that in mind, if a kid were watching traditional television, they would be seeing 230 hours of commercials a year, or 9.6 days. Netflix, and other services with kid-specific offerings like Amazon Video and Hulu, make it much easier for parents to control their kids' entertainment options. They offer an easy way to keep a child entertained with no commercial interruption.

By msmash from Slashdot's who-is-it-for department:Software giants Google, Microsoft, Apple and others release a major software update to their desktop and mobile operating system (and OS for other platforms they have) each year. This model seemed viable -- to a consumer -- until a few years ago -- the days when shiny new features were exciting -- but of late the number of bugs that companies are failing to patch before shipping these operating systems has seemingly gone off the roof. For instance, Apple has released more than 10 software updates since seeding out iOS 11 in September this year (up from seven last year). Similar is the case with macOS. The situation has gotten so dire that IT admins in many corporate environments are waiting for as long as six months before they are certain that it is fine to get the staff to move to the "newer" major software update. For companies like Apple, new software update also means a business opportunity. Several of the new features that they ship with the new update doesn't work with older iPhone and iPad models. And as we learned this week, new major software updates could hinder the performance of old gadgets. With these things in mind, should industry at large consider prolonging the duration between two major software updates? Or should they stick with a one-year software cycle model?

By BeauHD from Slashdot's behind-the-scenes department:An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Under fire for Facebook Inc.'s role as a platform for political propaganda, co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has punched back, saying his mission is above partisanship. "We hope to give all people a voice and create a platform for all ideas," Zuckerberg wrote in September after President Donald Trump accused Facebook of bias. Zuckerberg's social network is a politically agnostic tool for its more than 2 billion users, he has said. But Facebook, it turns out, is no bystander in global politics. What he hasn't said is that his company actively works with political parties and leaders including those who use the platform to stifle opposition -- sometimes with the aid of "troll armies" that spread misinformation and extremist ideologies.

The initiative is run by a little-known Facebook global government and politics team that's neutral in that it works with nearly anyone seeking or securing power. The unit is led from Washington by Katie Harbath, a former Republican digital strategist who worked on former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's 2008 presidential campaign. Since Facebook hired Harbath three years later, her team has traveled the globe helping political clients use the company's powerful digital tools. In some of the world's biggest democracies -- from India and Brazil to Germany and the U.K. -- the unit's employees have become de facto campaign workers. And once a candidate is elected, the company in some instances goes on to train government employees or provide technical assistance for live streams at official state events.

By msmash from Slashdot's paying-the-price department:An anonymous reader shares a report: The FCC plans to fine Sinclair Broadcasting group more than $13 million for failing to make the required disclosures related to programming sponsored by a third party. It's the largest fine the FCC has ever proposed for violation of its ad disclosure rules, which require broadcasters to disclose who is paying for sponsored programming.

By msmash from Slashdot's not-the-onion department:The Long Island Ice Tea Corporation is exactly what it sounds like: a company that sells people bottled iced tea and lemonade. But today the company announced a significant change of strategy that would start with changing its name to "Long Blockchain Corporation." From a report: The company was "shifting its primary corporate focus towards the exploration of and investment in opportunities that leverage the benefits of blockchain technology," the company said in a Thursday morning press release. "Emerging blockchain technologies are creating a fundamental paradigm shift across the global marketplace," the company said. The stock market loved the announcement. Trading opened Thursday morning more than 200 percent higher than Wednesday night's closing price. The company isn't getting out of the iced tea business. "The Company will continue to operate Long Island Brand Beverages, LLC as a wholly-owned subsidiary," the company writes in its press release. The new blockchain efforts are only in their "preliminary stages," the press release says, and will likely involve investing or forming partnerships with other companies. One potential partner is providing "blockchain infrastructure for the financial services industry." Another is building a "new smart contract platform for building decentralized applications."

By msmash from Slashdot's let's-get-chatting department:An anonymous reader writes: As I am sliding down the far side of 60, retirement is something coming up in two or three years. The usual notice time is two weeks, but I'm one of two people (maybe three if they pull one back in off other projects he's done the past four years) who do what I do, and is fairly important to the company's product. Yeah, we'd be in serious hurt if one of us were hit by a truck. I'd like to give a lot of notice. It took them six months to find me for this position half a decade ago. But I don't want to be let go before I'm ready to go, either. Most slashdotters seem to be a lot younger than me, so maybe I'm asking in the wrong place, but has anyone else dealt with this issue?

By msmash from Slashdot's end-of-road department:Amazon is planning to retire its Music storage subscription service, the plan that enabled Amazon customers to upload their own music to the company's servers. From a report: Amazon Music Storage subscription plans, which let users upload music from their Mac or PC and stream them alongside the in-app on-demand and radio options, will be accepted until Jan. 15, 2018. Then, the service will run until January 2019, when it will be removed entirely. As of Monday this week, free plans -- which allow for 250 songs to be stored in the cloud -- are no longer able to upload new music to their MP3 locker.

By msmash from Slashdot's closer-look department:Ron Nixon, writing for The New York Times: A new report concludes that a Department of Homeland Security pilot program improperly gathers data on Americans when it requires passengers embarking on foreign flights to undergo facial recognition scans to ensure they haven't overstayed visas. The report, released on Thursday by researchers at the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown University's law school, called the system an invasive surveillance tool that the department has installed at nearly a dozen airports without going through a required federal rule-making process. The report's authors examined dozens of Department of Homeland Security documents and raised questions about the accuracy of facial recognition scans. They said the technology had high error rates and are subject to bias, because the scans often fail to properly identify women and African-Americans. "It's telling that D.H.S. cannot identify a single benefit actually resulting from airport face scans at the departure gate," said Harrison Rudolph, an associate at the center and one of the report's co-authors. "D.H.S. doesn't need a face-scanning system to catch travelers without a photo on file. It's alarming that D.H.S. still hasn't supplied evidence for the necessity of this $1 billion program," he added.

By msmash from Slashdot's slow-pace department:An anonymous reader shares a report: The use of wearable technology devices -- like watches, glasses and fitness tracking bracelets -- will grow 11.9 percent next year, eMarketer predicts, with the growth rate continuing to slow compared to previous years. Smartwatches will drive the bulk of wearables growth, but the number of people who use wearable technology will still be less than 20 percent of the population. Experts suggest wearable adoption will slow due to cost and unmet user expectations. Still, others, like analyst firm IDC, predict that U.S. wearable use will continue to climb, doubling in size by devices shipped 2021, just at a slower pace.

By msmash from Slashdot's when-in-a-hole,-stop-digging department:Zack Whittaker, writing for ZDNet: Keeper, a password manager software maker, has filed a lawsuit against a news reporter and its publication after a story was posted reporting a vulnerability disclosure. Dan Goodin, security editor at Ars Technica, was named defendant in a suit filed Tuesday by Chicago-based Keeper Security, which accused Goodin of "false and misleading statements" about the company's password manager. Goodin's story, posted December 15, cited Google security researcher Tavis Ormandy, who said in a vulnerability disclosure report he posted a day earlier that a security flaw in Keeper allowed "any website to steal any password" through the password manager's browser extension.

By msmash from Slashdot's closer-look department:An anonymous reader shares an Axios report: In the beginning, Mars was a water world. But at some point in Mars' distant past, much of that water disappeared, leaving behind polar ice caps and a complex geology. Figuring out just where it went has been a major priority for scientists -- life as we know it can't exist without water, and any future settlers would need a steady supply. A new study, published Wednesday in Nature, suggests that much of what remains might in inaccessible. Some went into space, but even more of it may have sunk into the ground like a sponge, only to become bound up in minerals deep within the planet. "Mars, by virtue of its chemistry, was doomed from the start," study author Jon Wade, of Oxford University, tells Axios.

By msmash from Slashdot's security-is-hard department:Windows Hello, the face scanning security feature in Windows 10, has been defeated with the use of a printed out picture. From a report: In a report published yesterday, German pen-testing company SySS GmbH says it discovered that Windows Hello is vulnerable to the simplest and most common attack against facial recognition biometrics software -- the doomsday scenario of using a printed photo of the device's owner. Researchers say that by using a laser color printout of a low-resolution (340x340 pixels) photo of the device owner's face, modified to the near IR spectrum, they were able to unlock several Windows devices where Windows Hello had been previously activated. The attack worked even if the "enhanced anti-spoofing" feature had been enabled in the Windows Hello settings panel, albeit for these attacks SySS researchers said they needed a photo of a higher resolution of 480x480 pixels (which in reality is still a low-resolution photo). [...] Microsoft released updates earlier this month to patch the vulnerability.

By BeauHD from Slashdot's machine-bias department:An anonymous reader quotes a report from ProPublica: Verizon is among dozens of the nation's leading employers -- including Amazon, Goldman Sachs, Target and Facebook itself -- that placed recruitment ads limited to particular age groups, an investigation by ProPublica and The New York Times has found. The ability of advertisers to deliver their message to the precise audience most likely to respond is the cornerstone of Facebook's business model. But using the system to expose job opportunities only to certain age groups has raised concerns about fairness to older workers. Several experts questioned whether the practice is in keeping with the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, which prohibits bias against people 40 or older in hiring or employment. Many jurisdictions make it a crime to "aid" or "abet" age discrimination, a provision that could apply to companies like Facebook that distribute job ads.

Facebook defended the practice. "Used responsibly, age-based targeting for employment purposes is an accepted industry practice and for good reason: it helps employers recruit and people of all ages find work," said Rob Goldman, a Facebook vice president. The revelations come at a time when the unregulated power of the tech companies is under increased scrutiny, and Congress is weighing whether to limit the immunity that it granted to tech companies in 1996 for third-party content on their platforms.

By BeauHD from Slashdot's first-of-its-kind department:schwit1 shares a report from ScienceAlert: In a historic move, the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday approved a pioneering gene therapy for a rare form of childhood blindness, the first such treatment cleared in the United States for an inherited disease. The approval signals a new era for gene therapy, a field that struggled for decades to overcome devastating setbacks but now is pushing forward in an effort to develop treatments for haemophilia, sickle-cell anaemia, and an array of other genetic diseases. Yet the products, should they reach patients, are likely to cost as much as $1 million for both eyes.

By BeauHD from Slashdot's next-gen-shopping department:According to Recode, Walmart's startup incubator is experimenting with a cashier-less store concept called Project Kepler, which "aims to reimagine the in-store shopping experience with the help of technologies like computer vision." The goal is reportedly the "creation of physical stores that would operate without checkout lines or cashiers -- in a similar fashion to Amazon's futuristic Amazon Go store." From the report: The Project Kepler project focused on the future of in-store shopping is being led by Mike Hanrahan, the co-founder and former chief technology officer for Jet.com, multiple sources tell Recode. It is located in Hoboken, N.J., where Jet is based. A Project Kepler job listing for a "computer vision engineer" says that the role will involve creating a "best-in-class consumer experience in the physical retail space." Amazon's Go concept uses a combination of sensors and cameras to track what each store shopper takes off of shelves so it can automatically bill them for their purchase without their having to stop to pay on the way out. The store's launch has been severely delayed, however, with reports that the technology did not work well when the store was crowded. Walmart is envisioning a similar system that would potentially eliminate the need for cashiers in stores outfitted with the technology. Walmart has more than two million employees worldwide, many of whom work at checkout.

By msmash from Slashdot's a-middleground department:Have you noticed that your tiniest ecommerce items, which used to be shipped in a box, are now arriving in a padded envelope? WSJ reports: Amazon is trying to ship each order in one correctly sized package instead of multiple boxes, responding to rising shipping costs and consumers' concern about the environmental impact (Editor's note: the link may be paywalled) and general nuisance of all that cardboard. That means adding bubble envelopes, tweaking algorithms and negotiating with manufacturers to make smaller packaging specifically for online sales, not store shelves. [...] This year, Amazon added machines in its warehouses that create padded mailers on demand to fit smaller items, all of which used to go into the company's smallest-sized box. Almost half of all of Amazon's products fit into the new mailers and poly bags, says Kim Houchens, director of customer packaging experience. Her team has been working to improve algorithms that help decide which size box and how many items should be packed together in each shipment. The algorithms use machine learning to test out new combinations -- for example, shipping a breakable item in a smaller box with less cushioning. The algorithm can scan customer reviews and other data to see if it worked and adjust as needed.